Coaches Take On Tournament…

On a young team and the CAA tournament: “When I speak about our youth I don’t use it as an excuse. I think it is a strength of our team. The thing I’m most impressed with is they hung together.”

On playing well: “I’d be pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes if I said we weren’t playing our best basketball.”

On the tournament: “In the old days the quarterfinals were the lopsided games and the semifinals were the special games. What I see now, the first round has dangerous games but once you get to the quarters nowadays, the quarterfinal games are special and the semifinals are like two finals.”

On Gerald Lee: His foot was hurting during the game but the trainer said he couldn’t hurt it any worse so “we went for it and Gerald played a whale of a game. Under the circumstances it was a pretty courageous effort.”

Handicapping the tournament: “Somebody’s going to get a little momentum. One team may escape one night and gain momentum. (Look at) William & Mary last year. If the last second shot against Georgia State doesn’t go in they lose in the first round.”

When asked for his coach of the year vote: “I want to know what coach answers that so I can send him a stupid note.” (Note: he was laughing and joking and not answering. Funny stuff on a snowy Monday.)

Bill Coen

On finishing slow: “We talked about it yesterday. You have 18 games to earn and bye and we did that. Now the third portion of the season is upon us, postseason.”

On his vote for coach of the year: “I heard Blaine’s answer and I don’t want to get a note.” (More laughter.)

Anthony Grant

On advantage on playing in Richmond: “If we can make it to the championship, being right here is covnentient for our fans. Being a tournament atmosphere other than close promixmity to campus…I look at it as any other tournament. It’s a neutral site and you have to go play your best basketball.”

Tony Shaver

On The Tribe’s recent good play: “I thought our execution, our defense, our intensity, our focus were all at a high level for us. We’re a much improved team. We’re healthy.”

On having four games to win: “Doggone it you get to a championship game and (have an opportunity to) get to an NCAA, at their age, there are a lot of things to propel you. I don’t think tired is as big of an issue as beating four teams in four days in this conference.”

On Danny Sumner’s struggles this year: “He hasn’t dealt with physical play as well as we’d like him to.”

Benny Moss

“Our guys are confident they can play with anyone in the league.”

“We are a dangerous team because we are competitive. It’s not like early January. We haven’t won as many as we would’ve liked, but we’ve been in almost all of them.”

Matt Brady Injury Update: Devon Moore they will find out about on Wednesday. So will all of us. Brady also noted something may be amiss with Andrey Semenov. My words not his: Semenov was excellent prior to his concussion and not good since then.

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Oops–got a lot more coming…have to run take care of snow removal and real live work.